


My Heart Is Gold And My Hands Are Cold

by ProneToRelapse



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Drabble, Flash Fic, Hanahaki Disease, M/M, One-Sided Attraction, One-sided Hank Anderson/Connor, Unhappy Ending, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-28
Updated: 2018-07-28
Packaged: 2019-06-17 14:23:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15463335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProneToRelapse/pseuds/ProneToRelapse
Summary: Connor lets himself run out of time.





	My Heart Is Gold And My Hands Are Cold

**Author's Note:**

> oops?

In a small alley off a busy road, cordoned off by police holo-signs and suited officers, Connor makes a choked sound into his fist, systems detecting a small obstruction in his artificial airways. 

Hank looks over, frowning. “You okay, Connor?”

“Fine, Lieutenant,” Connor croaks, turning away to make that odd spasming sound again. It makes no sense that his body should react like this. It feels like what Connor imagines a human cough to feel like. His synthetic lungs burn and his throat tickles. He makes the coughing sound again, palm cupped over his mouth. 

There in his palm is a small petal, stained thirium blue. 

Connor stares at it. 

_No…_ _It’s not possible…_

“You sure you’re alright, Connor?”

“F-Fine, Lieutenant!” He closes his fist around the petal, hiding it from view. “Simple malfunction of my airways, nothing more.”

Nothing more?

His artificial heart is breaking and his lungs are slowly filling with petals. It should be impossible, but the evidence is burning in his fist. He stuffs it into his pocket and closes down his airways while Hank turns back to Ben to discuss the body lying prone between them. 

Connor doesn’t hear what they say. The petal burns a hole in his pocket, searing his thigh through the denim. 

The next body they find is grotesquely beautiful. Chassis burst open and thick vines budded with rich sapphire flowers spilling through the cracks like some form of macabre art piece. Connor can’t take his eyes off it. 

It shouldn’t be possible. Flowers cannot bloom inside artificial bodies. There is nothing inside them conducive to the creation of natural life. The more Connor stares, the more fear claws through his synthetic nerves. He thinks of the soft petals shoved deep into the trashcan at home, the ones that keep spilling from his lips unbidden and unwanted. 

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Hank says to Chris. Their voices sound so far away. 

Connor stands in the bathroom facing the mirror. He’s shirtless and bare of skin over his chest. He places a palm against his abdomen and pushes, prompting his sternum and abdominal plating to slide back neatly, exposing his deep blue insides. 

Almost every wire in his body is caught and curled with small flowers, petals slick with thirium, glinting in the brightness of the fluorescents. His lungs are pinpricked with tiny buds like forget-me-nots. He reaches inside himself to brush a fingertip over the petal and the pain of it almost sends him to his knees. 

“Connor?” A soft knock from the door and the low, concerned pitch of Hank’s voice sends a jolt of panic through Connor’s body. He clutches the sink, swallowing hard. 

“I’m fine!” He calls, and it rings with filthy dishonesty. “I’ll be out in a moment!”

“What do I do?” Connor demands, flinching as North’s gentle fingers catch one of the petals of the buds now circling Connor’s forearms. She pulls her hand away with a murmured apology and steps over to lift something out of a small box on her dresser.

When she extends her hand, palm open, a small perfect rosebud sits there, petals curved delicately, the prettiest shade of cerulean Connor has ever seen. 

“Unrequited love,” North says softly. “That’s what they are. It’s an old human affliction.”

Connor looks between the flower and North’s carefully blank expression. “How did you survive?”

“I ripped them out,” she says stonily. “I fought too hard for my life to let this kill me.”

“Did it hurt?”

“More than anything.”

“And… And after?”

“I feel nothing for them,” North tells him. She closes her fingers round the bud, crushing it into pulp. “But I’m alive. That’s all that matters.”

Connor despises all of his options. He doesn’t want anything to change. He wants to live as he is now, to continue on at Hank’s side forever as his friend, loyal to the end of all things. He doesn’t want to bare his heart and ruin everything. Nor does he want to rip the buds from his body and lose his closest friend. 

But his silence is killing him. 

He can feel it with every breath. The flowers are pushing at his casing from the inside, pressuring the chassis to a point of constant, dull pain. He doesn’t have much longer before they burst through, ripping through his chest and destroying his pump regulator in a cascade of vines and petals. 

But whatever his misgivings, his body makes the choice for him, forcing him to his knees in the kitchen as petals spill from his lips. 

Hank’s hands fly frantically over his face, his neck, his shoulders. 

He can barely understand Hank’s frenzied words. 

“…is it? Tell me, Connor! Tell me, I can help you!”

Connor closes his eyes against tears that spill over anyway. 

_I’m dying_ , he thinks.  _I don’t want to die._

A single petal falls to the floor, redder than blood, stark against the carpet of blue. 

_“You_ ,” Connor chokes, chassis splintering like glass under his synthskin. 

Hank doesn’t answer and fire bursts through Connor’s chest like the most unholy of agonies. 

 

 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Stained Blue](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15528576) by [Meaiku](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meaiku/pseuds/Meaiku)




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